Give Now
UCLA College
  • About
    • The College
    • Leadership
      • Deans of the College
      • Faculty Executive Committee
      • College Development
      • Organization Chart
    • Divisions
      • Humanities
      • Life Sciences
      • Physical Sciences
      • Social Sciences
      • Division of Undergraduate Education
    • College Magazine
  • Academics
    • Departments and Programs
    • Institutes and Centers
    • Undergraduate Admission
  • News
    • News
    • Our Stories
  • Magazine
    • Archive
  • Events
  • Commencement
  • Search
  • Menu

News

New endowed chair in history goes to Nile Green, scholar of global history and Islam

March 28, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

 

Photo of Nile Green

Nile Green

UCLA professor of history Nile Green, a prolific author whose research has focused on on Muslims in Asia, Africa and Europe, has been named the first Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History.

The Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair was created through a gift from UCLA alumnus Hollis Lenderking and is named to honor the Arab historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun, widely considered as a forerunner of the modern disciplines of historiography, sociology, economics and demography. As a scholar, Green aims to bring global history into conversation with Islamic history.

“UCLA’s history curriculum expanded — I should say “exploded’ — my view of civilization during the tumultuous and pivotal era connecting the 1960s and 70s,” said Lenderking, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA in 1971 and in 2009 also established the John Muir Memorial Endowed Chair in Geography, which is held by Glen MacDonald.

Lenderking recalled that when he was a student, the history department did not include specific classes on world history in the course catalog. He said he was fascinated to learn of its inclusion in recent years, especially considering the fact that the term “globalism” has become a lightning-rod for study and debate across societies, economies and cultures.

“It was hailed almost uncritically as the wave of the future in the 1990s, but has been rocked by disputation from every quarter in the decades since,” Lenderking said.

At a recent lecture celebrating his becoming the new chair, Green borrowed a phrase from poet William Blake to ponder “A World in A Grain of Sand: The Historian’s Dilemma of Scale” and how historians are reckoning with exponentially increasing amounts of data about more people in more places in more times.

“In recent decades, the accumulative character of historical knowledge has increased that dilemma, and access to big data will continue to do so, confronting the historian with the universal library imagined by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1941 story, ‘La Biblioteca de Babel,’” said Green, who in 2015-16 he held the William Andrews Clark Professorship and who in 2018 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

But world history is not necessarily the same as the history of the world, Green would argue. And his exhortation to modern historians is to explore processes that use manageable or even micro-optics to address large-scale, macro problems.

“World history is defined by an approach, or method, rather than a fixed scale,” he said. “It is the study of processes that are intrinsically inter-regional; that unfold across geographical, ethnic, linguistic, or political boundaries. Examining those processes doesn’t necessarily require writing the history of the whole world.”

Green has a new book coming out in May titled, “The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca.” He’s also currently writing a book titled “A Very Short Introduction to Global Islam,” which seeks to address the questions what global Islam is and where it came from, as well as a book about the Indian Ocean, using Urdu and Persian travelogues to tell the story of interactions between India, Iran, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Tags: History, UCLA College, UCLA Social Sciences
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by Mail
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/NileGreen_thmb.jpg 211 301 administrator https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.png administrator2019-03-28 16:29:582019-03-28 16:31:00New endowed chair in history goes to Nile Green, scholar of global history and Islam

Recent Stories

  • #BlackHistoryMonth: Supporting VIP Scholars
    Black History Month - Supporting VIP Scholars
  • Sarah Haley receives Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholars Award
    Sarah Haley
  • Sustainable LA Grand Challenge receives $543,000 commitment for student programming, equitable clean water research
    Image Source: Sustainable LA Grand Challenge Undergraduate Research Scholars Program
  • New UCLA center promotes reproductive science and sexual health
    Picture of a hand gently holding a baby’s fingers.
  • UCLA’s Dominic Thomas wins international Gutenberg Research Chair honor
    Dominic Thomas
  • Leading the Japan-America Innovators of Medicine
    Kanon Mori, wearing a nametag, speaks into a microphone
  • UCLA collaboration fosters mathematical brilliance of Latino and Black middle school students
  • Leading the College: A conversation with new senior dean Miguel García-Garibay
    Miguel García-Garibay in the Royce Hall portico
  • History professors on New Yorker’s best books of 2022 list
    Kelly Lytle Hernández and David Myers
  • Graduate students selected for Fulbright-Hays Fellowship
    UCLA Fulbright winners collage

Categories

  • Alumni & Friends
  • Awards & Honors
  • Box 1
  • Box 2
  • Box 3
  • Box 4
  • Box 5
  • Box 6
  • Campus & Community
  • College Magazine
  • College News
  • College Newsletter
  • Commencement
  • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
  • Events
  • Faculty
  • Featured Stories
  • Giving
  • Humanities
  • Life Sciences
  • Main Story – Homepage
  • Our Stories
  • Physical Sciences
  • Research
  • Social Sciences
  • Students
  • Sustainability
  • Undergraduate Education

1309 Murphy Hall
Box 951413
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1413

(t) (310) 206-1953
(f) (310) 267-2343

UCLA College

  • About
  • News
  • Magazine
  • Commencement
  • Giving
  • Contact

Related Sites

  • Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
  • Corporate & Foundation Relations
  • Centennial Campaign
  • Senior Survey
  • Impact of Philanthropy

Connect

  • Alumni
  • Prospective Students
  • Current Students
  • Parents & Families
  • Faculty
  • Staff

Information

  • Careers
  • Directory
  • Academic Calendar
  • UCLA Newsroom
  • Media & Journalists
  • Parking and Transportation
  • Maps & Directions
  • Emergency
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
© Copyright 2023 UCLA - Login
Terms of Use Accessibility
Giant X-ray ‘chimneys’ are exhaust vents for vast energies produced at Milky... The galactic chimneys (yellow-orange areas extending vertically) are centered on the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Photo of Professor Stephanie Jamison. Professor Stephanie Jamison to share how she finds women in ancient, often patriarchal,...
Scroll to top